How We Price a Trip

How a quotation is built

A quotation on this site is built the same way every time, whichever service you are booking. We start from the base fare for the vehicle class you have chosen, published per kilometre, and add to it whatever else is genuinely true of your trip.

A quotation, in the sense this page uses the word, is the written statement defined in full at /booking-terms: it names the vehicle class, the route or duty, the fare and what it includes, and it stands until you confirm it or the period it names passes. Nothing said on a call and nothing typed into a WhatsApp reply is itself a quotation. What follows here is what that written document actually contains, line by line, and why it is built in this order rather than any other.

• Base fare: the class's published per kilometre rate, multiplied by the distance charged for the trip. The rate is the one shown against your vehicle class on /tariff, and how the distance itself is worked out is set out at /legal/km-and-hours-computation.
• Driver allowance: a fixed amount for each calendar day the vehicle is held, set by the vehicle class and never by which driver is actually assigned to your trip. The figure by class, and exactly when it applies, is at /legal/driver-allowance.
• Toll, parking, state entry tax and permit fee, where the trip actually attracts them, at actuals. What each of these is, when it genuinely applies to a trip, and how to tell a real one from a charge invented on the road, is at /legal/permits-tolls-and-taxes.
• GST, calculated on the fare and the driver allowance together, and never on any of the at-actuals charges above it. The rate, the SAC code behind it, and how it is shown on your invoice are at /legal/gst-and-invoicing.

Look at what actually decides each line and the order stops being arbitrary. The base fare and the driver allowance are both fixed the moment you tell us the vehicle class and the number of days you need the car: neither depends on which road you actually take, only on what you have booked and for how long, which is why the same class and the same number of days produce the same two lines whichever service you are booking. The at-actuals charges work the other way round, because none of them can be fixed by the vehicle class alone: a toll, a state entry tax or a hill entry fee depends on the specific route your trip takes, so a drop that never leaves Delhi-NCR sees none of them and a run into the hills can see two or three. GST is worked out last of all, and only on the first two lines added together, because a toll or a state tax is money that passes straight through us to a highway authority or a state government rather than payment for our own service, and we do not add our tax on top of somebody else's levy.

Each of these is its own line on the quotation, not one number with everything folded into it. Where a charge genuinely does not apply to your trip, a state entry tax on a trip that never crosses a state line, for instance, its line is left off rather than shown at zero. A single bundled figure would be simpler to write and harder for you to check: fold the driver allowance into a slightly higher base rate, or fold an assumed toll into it, and there is nothing left for you to hold up against the tariff you were shown or the receipt for the road you actually travelled. Building the quotation as separate, addressable lines is what keeps every figure checkable against its own source, the base fare against the class rate on /tariff, the driver allowance against the table at /legal/driver-allowance, an at-actuals charge against its own receipt, rather than trusted on our word alone.

What is included, and what is charged on top

Every fare on this site includes the same three things, whatever you are booking.

Fuel and running cost

Whatever the trip burns.

The chauffeur

His driving charges for the duty.

Maintenance, insurance and air conditioning

The vehicle is insured and serviced, and the AC runs.

These three sit inside the base fare and never come off it, on any service we run, because each one is a genuine cost of putting the vehicle on the road at all rather than a cost that depends on where the road happens to take it. Fuel, the chauffeur's own charges and the vehicle's upkeep do not vary between a duty that never leaves Delhi-NCR and one that runs out to the hills; they are constant, which is exactly why they belong in one figure rather than three separate lines that would never actually move from one trip to the next.

Everything else is charged on top for the opposite reason: because it genuinely does vary, trip to trip, in a way the base fare cannot see in advance. A toll depends on which stretch of road your route actually uses. A state entry tax depends on whether your trip crosses a state line at all. Waiting time depends on how long you are actually inside wherever you have gone. Pricing any of these into one all-in figure would mean charging every trip as though it carried the most expensive version of itself, every toll, every border and a long wait built in, whether your own trip has any of them or not, which costs the customer whose trip has none of them for the benefit of nobody. Naming each charge separately and billing it only where it actually applies is the fairer arithmetic, even though it makes the quotation longer to read.

• Toll
• Parking
• State entry tax
• Driver allowance
• GST
• Kilometres beyond the quoted itinerary
• Waiting beyond the free period
• Hill entry and green tax
• Inter-state permit
• The driver's night halt, on a multi-day trip
• Decoration, where you have asked for it

Not every trip attracts every one of these. An airport transfer within one city, for instance, is unlikely to see a hill tax or a permit fee, and a trip that never leaves the state will not see a state entry tax at all. Which of these genuinely apply to your trip, with the figure against each one, is what the "What the fare covers" block on the service page you are booking from actually shows, built from the same rate card for every service on this site, and it is repeated on your written quotation before you confirm. The full detail behind each of these, what it is, when it genuinely applies and how to tell a real charge from one improvised on the road, is set out in full at /legal/permits-tolls-and-taxes for the roadside and government charges, at /legal/driver-allowance for the driver's allowance and night halt, and at /legal/gst-and-invoicing for GST. This page states what the split is and why; those pages state what each item on it actually costs and how it is evidenced.

The minimum chargeable distance

Every trip priced per kilometre carries a minimum chargeable distance of 250 km. Travel less than that and the distance line on your quotation is still charged at 250 km, at the class's published rate; travel more, and you pay for what you actually travelled.

A minimum exists because a chauffeur-driven hire does not become free of cost simply because the trip turns out short. The vehicle and the driver are committed to your duty for the time it takes, whatever distance it actually covers, in exactly the way they would be for a longer one, and pricing a short trip as though only the metres driven mattered would price that commitment at nothing. That is the reasoning behind the figure; how it is actually counted is a separate question, answered in full below.

This page states the figure and where it lands on your quotation. How it is counted against the number of days a vehicle is held, how it applies on a multi-day tour, and how it is evidenced against the duty slip and the odometer, is a longer question with its own full answer at /legal/km-and-hours-computation, and this page does not repeat that working: one figure, one page that owns how it is worked out, so the two cannot drift apart from each other.

The one published exception is the Panipat to Delhi drop, which is priced as a fixed fare with no kilometre component and no minimum to apply. Because that route has a single published figure per vehicle class rather than a rate multiplied by distance, there is no per-kilometre line for a minimum to apply to in the first place; the fixed figure is the whole of the fare, as set out at /panipat-to-delhi.

A worked example

We have not put a rupee figure against any of the lines below. A worked example with numbers attached is only useful for as long as those numbers are current, and a rate card does move, on the short, closed list of reasons set out further down this page. A figure that was accurate the day this page was written and stale a year later would still look exactly like a real quotation long after it had stopped being one, which is worse than showing no figure at all. What does not change from one rate card to the next is the structure: the order the lines appear in, and what each one is actually based on. That is what this section shows you.

Say you book a sedan for a one-way outstation drop. Your quotation reads as a short list of lines, in this order: a base fare line, the class's published per-kilometre rate multiplied by the greater of the distance you are actually travelling and the minimum chargeable distance; a driver allowance line, for each calendar day the vehicle is held; a toll line, at actuals, if the road you are travelling carries one; and a GST line, calculated on the fare and the allowance together. The total is the sum of those lines, and it is the figure you confirm.

For the actual figures, go to the source that is guaranteed to be current rather than to a page that could fall behind it. /tariff shows the published per kilometre rate for every vehicle class as it stands today, and the service page for the trip you are pricing, an outstation drop, an airport transfer, a wedding booking, carries its own "What the fare covers" block, built from the same rate card, with the exclusions that genuinely apply to that service and the driver allowance range already filled in. Either one is reading the same figures your written quotation will use.

GST

GST is charged at 5%, without input tax credit, shown as its own line on your quotation and on your invoice.

It is charged the same way on every booking, whichever service you use and whoever you are: there is no lower rate available by asking for one, and no higher rate on offer that carries an input credit we do not otherwise give. The figure is worked out on the base fare and the driver allowance together, and never on toll, parking, a state tax, a permit fee or any other charge billed at actuals, because those pass straight through us to a highway authority, a state government or another authority rather than being payment for a service of ours, and we do not add our own tax on top of somebody else's levy.

Where you are booking as a body-corporate client, a private limited company or an LLP, for instance, GST on our invoice to you works differently again: it becomes payable by you under reverse charge rather than charged forward by us. That is a real difference for a finance or procurement team weighing our quotation against somebody else's, and it, along with the SAC codes we invoice under, what your invoice carries, and how TDS applies for a corporate client, is set out in full at /legal/gst-and-invoicing.

What can change a quoted price after you have it

A price we have quoted you does not move once you have it, except for a short, closed list of reasons. The same list, in full, is in our Booking Terms & Conditions, because two of our policies both depend on it and it is stated once rather than restated, and risked drifting, in each.

The word closed is doing the actual work in that sentence. A list of reasons a price can move is worth very little if it is open to a reason nobody thought to write down, because an open list can always grow by one more entry on the day it becomes convenient to add one. Closing it means the three reasons below are the whole of what can move your fare, a ceiling rather than a starting point, and nothing outside them, whatever the excuse offered at the time, is a legitimate basis for asking you for more once you are holding a confirmed quotation.

A quoted price may be revised only for the following reasons, and no others: (a) a change in fuel price notified by the oil marketing companies; (b) a change in toll, state entry tax, permit fee or any government levy; (c) a change to the itinerary, dates, vehicle class or passenger count requested by you. We will tell you in writing, with the reason and the arithmetic, before any revision takes effect, and you may cancel without charge if you do not accept it.

It is worth seeing what an open list would actually allow, next to the closed one above. Take a family who has confirmed a quotation for a wedding weekend: three cars, two days, a fixed base fare and a fixed driver allowance, all agreed and confirmed in writing before a single car left the yard. Under an open list, almost anything could be offered as grounds to revise that figure once the cars are already committed and the wedding is two days away: a longer route than first expected, heavier traffic than planned for, a car held back a couple of hours past the time originally discussed, a driver saying afterwards that the day turned out more demanding than quoted. Not one of those four is a fuel price notified by the oil marketing companies, a government levy or a change the family themselves asked for, and every one of them is exactly the vague, after-the-fact justification a closed list exists to rule out before it can be used. Under our closed list, none of those four is a valid reason to revise the figure. The fare that was confirmed is the fare that is owed, and the only way it moves at all is one of the three reasons named above, told to the family in writing, with the arithmetic behind it, before it applies, with the right to walk away from the revision without a charge if they do not accept it.

The anti-drip commitment

Of everything on this page, this is the promise that matters most, because it covers the one point in a trip where you have the least room to do anything about a figure you do not like. Every other number here, the base fare, the driver allowance, even a revision under the closed list above, reaches you before you are committed: you can compare it against another quotation, question it, or simply walk away while it is still only a quotation and nothing has been booked. A charge that turns up once the car is already on the road, or once you are already at your destination with a driver standing by to be paid, is a different thing altogether. You are not comparing it against anything at that point and you are not genuinely free to decline it the way you were free to decline the quotation itself. That is precisely the moment drip pricing is designed to exploit, and it is the moment this commitment exists to close off.

The price we show you in your quotation is the price you pay. Toll, parking, state entry tax and driver allowance, where payable at actuals, are shown as named line items in the quotation before you confirm, never added afterwards. Any amount billed at actuals will be supported by a receipt.

Checking this is meant to be straightforward, not a task for an accountant. The figure on your invoice should match, line for line, the figure on the quotation you confirmed, because nothing was ever meant to be added between the two beyond a revision under the closed list above, told to you in writing before it applied. If a figure on your invoice does not match what was quoted, tell us. Our Grievance Officer and the full escalation ladder are at /grievance-redressal.